Audio Conferencing.
Explaining Audio Conferencing
Audio conferencing is one of the top ways for businesses to cut travel costs and increase productivity. And as there is no special equipment or knowledge required to hold them, more and more offices are choosing audio conferences over the standard business meeting.
What is Audio Conferencing?
An audio conference, or teleconference, is simply when a meeting between several parties is held over the telephone instead of in person. The party instigating the audio-conference is known as the calling party and those joining the call are known as the participants. Depending on the meeting’s objective, these conferences are set up so that the calling party is either just a passive listener or can join in on the conversation. A simple form of audio conferencing is three-way calling, where there are just three parties involved, and this is generally a form of small business software used mainly by smaller companies.
Your Audio Conferencing Options
There are special audio conference telephone sets that businesses can buy if they plan on holding a large number of such conferences but normal landline desk phones, mobile phones and computers will also do the trick. There are two ways to set up an audio-teleconference: adding other call participants can either be controlled by the calling party, who calls them individually to add them, or the call participants themselves can call into a conference bridge to gain access. There are also special service providers who manage audio conferences by maintaining conference bridges and allocating special phone or PIN numbers to participants to enter for them to dial in to a conference. These service providers will either charge a monthly flat fee or will offer a pay-as-you-go system and will tailor their packages according to a business’s online collaboration needs. An innovative new use for audio conferencing is live streaming or podcasting of conference calls where there is a large listening audience and members dial in only if they want to take part in the discussion.
Uses of Audio Conferencing
Audio conferencing is recognized as the best way to increase productivity by reducing time spent out of the office. It is also the cheapest way to reach many people simultaneously for business presentations, online training sessions or strategy meetings and businesses are continually finding new and innovative ways to put this technology to use. Audio conferencing is a great solution for remote support sessions, when a tech support consultant is assisting a client with their computer problems.
Audio-teleconferences are also a component of a business group meeting online as well as the well-known webinar. Pairing an audio conference service with desktop sharing software can create a powerful web conferencing or team collaboration solution. Almost all US public corporations now report their quarterly results to their stock analysts through conference calls.